Election days, come and go. But the struggle of the people, to create a government which represents all of us, and not just the one percent—a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial, and environmental justice—that struggle continues. And I look forward, to being part of that struggle, with you.

I thought that was a good speech. I think it would have been a better speech, without all that lauding ladled onto The Mad Bomber. But then, it wasn't my speech.

I have never agreed with The Cranky Brooklyn Deli Man, on everything. To turn it around: the Deli Man, he does not believe, everything that I believe. But then again, neither does anyone else on the planet.

I think the Deli Man, he is a good man. And I think he meant it, when he said:

I understand, that many people, here, in this convention hall, and around the country, are disappointed, about the final results of the nominating process.

I think it's fair to say, that no one is more disappointed, than I am.

The Deli Man, he has now made a Finding. And from that, he has reached a Conclusion. The Finding, it is this:

The Hairball is a bully and a demagogue. The Hairball has made bigotry and hatred the cornerstone of his campaign.

In objective Reality, every word of that is True.

The Deli Man's Conclusion, however, after having made this Finding, it is that people should then vote for The Mad Bomber, to be the president.

I think the Deli Man, he has the right, to come to this Conclusion. If he wants to. But I also think, that just because that is his Conclusion, that doesn't mean that everybody else, has to Conclude so, too.

It is kinda like when the Science Men, they dig up a bone. They all look at it, and then all agree on the Finding: this is a bone. But then come the Conclusions. "This bone, it is from an elephant," pronounces the first Science Man. "Actually," asserts the second Science Man, "it is from a donkey." "It is clear that this bone, it is a Fringe event," propounds the third Science Man. And the fourth Science Man, he Concludes: "This bone does not really exist."

And so it goes. As they say: other voices, other rooms. And all that.

It was not only the dream of the Deli Man, and of his people, that died its final death, there in Philadelphia. For, there, too, died the great dream, of Sergeant Schultz.

For years, the sergeant, she had creamed her jeans, anticipating presiding over the convention that would anoint her beloved, The Mad Bomber, as the officially nominated Democratic version of president-tryer. Through all those years, all humans who were Sane and Decent, increasingly they implored Schultz to give up her post, and go work as a fry-cook or something. But no. She would not be moved.

Until, very shortly before the convention would commence, and at last Sergeant Schultz would realize her great dream . . . well, some Badness, it got loose in the tubes. And—and very quickly—it became clear, that the sergeant, she would have to be driven, and at once, out into the desert. The dutiful scapegoat, draped 'round her neck, and upon her flanks, all the sins of the Bomber, and all of her people.

Sergeant Schultz, at first she fiercely resisted this exile. "No!" cried she. "I can do it! Just let me! Please! I will do it!"

But the Bombardiers, they knew what would happen. If the sergeant were allowed, there in Philadelphia, to take the convention stage. This, it would happen:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmzsWxPLIOo]
And it would only get worse, from there.

And so, the Bombardiers, they reached across the aisle, to Clint "I Talk To The Chair" Eastwood, and asked him if they could borrow that big-ass, armored bus, from his true-life documentary film The Gauntlet. Then, once having secured this vehicle, from the obliging Mr. Eastwood, the Bombardiers, they laid the limp, weeping Sergeant Schultz, down upon the ground, before it, and then they started the engine, and they ran her over.

I was Looking at this convention, against medical advice. Because shortly after the Republican version of a convention, a few hours after The Hairball, there in Cleveland, blew his last chunk, I suffered a delayed, but very serious, allergic reaction, and slipped into a coma.

When I returned to . . . whatever this is . . . the doctors, they sternly informed me that I could not Look at any more of the politics. To do so, they warned, could be fatal.

I already knew this. Because, back in March, I had invited H. G. Wells and George Orwell over here, to watch with me a Republican "debate," featuring them who were then the Survivors, who had not, yet, been tossed off the island: The Hairball, Mondo Boobio, Zed Crud, and Death Of A Salesman. This "debate" proved so horrifying, so beyond reason, or even the will to live, that both men suffered severe and irreparable shocks to their systems, and died in my home. I had to go rent a backhoe, so I could bury them out in the yard. Regular readers of this space will recall that I wrote about these tragic events, here and here.

But I figured that watching the Deli Man, it would not send me to the boneyard. And I was right. I otherwise endeavored to be quite judicious, in selecting what of the convention I might view. For instance, I assumed there could be no harm in dropping in on Sarah Silverman; indeed, I was hoping she would deliver one of her special invocations:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSrhJGGDqx0]
But, no such luck. Instead, Silverman, as a Deli Man person, she was paired with Al Franken, a Bomber person, in an extremely awkward moment, that was meant to urge all Bomber and Deli Man persons, to "bridge" their differences . . . this all as intro to Paul Simon taking the stage to perform "Bridge Over Troubled Water."

Now wait just a dern minute. My brain, it was having an extreme confusion. Because I thought I had only very recently read in a tube that Paul Simon, he was quitting the music. Yet, there he was. Had I just imagined the quitting? Was I having a relapse? Simon, he himself, was having, there on the stage, some kind of something. And it surely wasn't much like "singing." No, he was having an embarrassment, and it was in public, and people were Looking. "Bridge Over Troubled Water," that has never been a Paul Simon song; it is a Simon and Garfunkel song. And Simon, alone, has never been able to pull it off. And he was certainly not pulling it off now, now that he had quit the music. The whole thing—a complete fiasco. It is a very nice notion, this "bridging." But if Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, they could not put aside whatever are their endless eternal differences, to appear, on this occasion, for this song, on stage, bridged back together, then how in the bleeding hell, could the Deli Man people, be expected to, basically overnight, get all bridgey, and lie down, and get naked, with The Mad Bomber?

Sarah Silverman, by the way, recently appeared in a true-life documentary film, I Smile Back, that is better than anything in the politics. It is about the Americans. About how, sometimes, you don't get better. Because that's just the way it is.

The wheel keeps turning, and nobody stays atop it, for long. That, also, is just the way it is.

And so, there was Jesse Jackson, whose "God Has Not Finished Me With Yet" speech was the jewel of the 1984 Democratic National Convention, relegated, here in 2016, to a speech of five minutes. And those five minutes scheduled so early that, down on the floor, the cleaning crew was still running the vacuums, hoovering up the detritus from the night before.

So, 1984: there are some parallels there, to 2016. Then, too, the Democratic donkey, it was hobbled by an old, fucked-out ward-heeler, expecting the nomination because it was "his turn." Then, too, an insurgent, he came out of nowhere, galvanizing people heretofore not galvanized, offering a vision at odds with the usual head-down, defeated, slow shufflings of the same-ol' same-ol' jackass. And Jackson, they laid on him, too, some funky flim-flam, some smears.

People of the Deli Man, they might want to peruse the text of that 1984 address: for some of what was wanted then, it can be seen, has since come to pass. So there can. Then. Occur movement. The vision of the Deli Man, and his people, it is not just going into the trash can, out to the garbage truck, and into the landfill. Believe it. Or, be an Eeyore, and believe it not. ; ) Your choice.

The wheel—this may be the real, root, fundamental problem, with the Bomber candidacy. Because she, and her husband, The Clenis, they were already at the top of the wheel. For, more or less, eight long years. They had their time. And then, their time, it passed. As it does for everybody. But they won't accept that. They want—nay, demand—a time, at the top, again.

They're greedy. And the wheel. It don't like that. Greed.

And now a word from our sponsor:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LClypXmGQYw]

The heat here at present is inhuman. Not because of climate change—god no—because we know from The Hairball that climate change is but a hoax, perpetrated by the Chinese. Something to do with the Chinese wanting to get all the money; I don't know: I can't really follow the argument; because I don't have great stinking streaks of syphilis crisscrossing my brain, like The Hairball does.

No, the Reason for the heat, is that set forth by The Hairball's running mate, Sixpence: since I do not believe in the particular form of sullen sky king as does Sixpence, I am going to go to Hell, and Satan, he is, now, just giving me a foretaste, of what is to come, while I am still alive, here on the earth.

Tuesday, or maybe it was Wednesday, it was so hot that when I went out on the porch to smoke, I just waved the cigarette in the air, and it lit right up.

That was the day I directed all available swamp coolers, fans, and fountains, to my suffering form, prostrate on the literal fainting couch, and slipped in and out of consciousness, as the fiery Jehovah-directed orb proceeded slowly, ever oh so slowly, across the white of the sky. At one point I understood that I had entered heat-hallucination, because I thought I heard the tipsy bubblings of that guy, experienced some twenty years ago, down there at the Irish bar, the one who drank boilermakers. Until I realized that the radio, which was softly on, had unaccountably switched over to the politics. And I was actually listening to the Bomber's would-be vice-president, the clearly-imitable Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Then there was Michael Bloomberg. Ye gods. Yet another example of the Bomber campaign shooting itself in the stomach. Because no one, no one at all, cares about Michael Bloomberg, except white men, there in New York City, with white foam on their lips, as they fervidly masturbate, with money.

Bloomberg, his appearance at the convention, that will not bring to the Bomber a single vote. If she had to go to somebody New York, she would have been better off putting Anthony Bourdain up there, to appeal to the tattooed junkie globe-trotting haggis-eating slice of the electorate.

The Mad Bomber, when she was famously "dead broke," and casting about for a state to carpetbag to, so she could get, from said state, into the US Senate, and from there into the Oral Office, where her husband once so merrily sprayed so much semen around, she settled on New York . . . and thereby contracted that shiveringly embarrassing and apex of arrogance affliction, whereby New Yorkers are firmly convinced that everybody everywhere is at all times and in all ways vitally interested in everything and everybody New York.

Thus, she again shot herself in the stomach, The Mad Bomber, and several times, in closing her DNC speech with a rapturous reference to Hamilton, a play that has yet to move out of NYC, and that therefore nobody in the Real world knows the first fuck about. Unless your head is directly drilled with NYC Matrix feeder-tubes, you don't know what the hey she's ululating.

In truth, NYC is a hideous B. F. Skinner experiment, that produces mostly huge rats. Exhibit A: The Hairball.

Before the white people showed up, the entire NYC region was home to but 15,000 Lanape people. That is, therefore, all that the land supports: 15,000 humans. And so all but 15,000 of the rats, they are going to need to scamper off. To other venues. Other rooms.

As Bloomberg, there on the radio, started shouting that he had more money than The Hairball—"WAY MORE!"—and challenging The Hairball to meet him on stage, to measure their money, like The Hairball once measured his penis, live and on stage, against his Survivoring Republican foes, I fell into a heat-fever dream. Wherein Bloomberg, he decided to run as an independent, against both The Mad Bomber, and The Hairball, all of them trying to be the president. And all three of these NYC people, they convened for a debate, in Manhattan. And while they were, there, busy debating, the rest of the Americans, they got these big saws, and they sliced NYC off, completely, from the United States. And then they shoved it out to sea. So the three stooges, they could then bicker over, but who got to run their little raft. While leaving all the rest of the Americans, in peace.

I envisioned a humanitarian mission, sort of in the spirit of Dunkirk, a fleet of boats, that would be sent out by the Americans, to evacuate the Real people, from the B. F. Skinner pustule, as it floated, ever farther, out to sea.

And I saw that, eventually, the NYC pustule, it would strike land, somewhere in Africa. Where Muslim immigration officials, they would come aboard, and, politely, detain The Hairball. As an illegal immigrant.

This: Justice.

The Americans, they would meanwhile have elected a Sane and Competent president, who would refuse to accept The Hairball's return, branding him an "undesirable alien." The Hairball would then become like that Man Without A Country person, fated to remain forever at sea, no land willing to receive his bones. The people wo/manning the ships, that would float The Hairball from hither to yon, and back again, eternally recurring, they would be true Heroes, required to withstand the daily bellows blowing from his lips—"FASTER, LOLITA HAIRBALL, FASTER, OH YEAH, RIGHT THERE!"—and, when they die, plaques, everywhere, will be mounted, Honoring their names.

The Mad Bomber, since she is supposed to love children so much, she, there in Africa, will revivify the old Sally Struthers "Save The Children" gig. While Bloomberg, he will wander the streets, beating the tambourine, warning the people against the horrors of Big Gulps, and the menace of squeegee-men. Eventually, he will drift far inland, to the Mountains Of The Moon, where he will open a School, devoted to teaching people how to read Business Week. Someone, someday, eventually, will attend.

So let it be written. So let it be done.

When she came on, there for her big speech, The Mad Bomber, she almost immediately started the thing where her eyes roll back in her head, so you can only see the whites of her eyes.

No. I don't want to see that. For isn't that what happens when you have a seizure? Or are turning into some demonic doll, like Chucky?

I couldn't look. I covered her visage, here on the tubes. I went over only to the audio.

But then, commenced, the shouting.

What is it, with the politics people, and the shouting? Don't they understand about the microphone? That the microphone means there need be no shouting?

No. Apparently not.

The Hairball, for instance, there never comes from him, anything, but the shouting.

He is the only known human, in the history of humans, who, even when he whispers "sweet nothings," there in the bed, to his beloved, instead bellows "sweet shoutings."

"OH, LOLITA HAIRBALL, I LOVE YOU SO, THE WAY YOU TICKLE MY PROSTATE; SWEET DAUGHTER, GIVE US A KISS, MMMM, SNUGGLE UP, TOUCH, SOFTLY, MY TENDER MICROPENIS, THAT YOU SWOLE TO ITS FULL HALF-INCH, WITH YOUR LOVE."

And the chandeliers. From the shouting. They shiver, shimmy, shake.

Meanwhile: The Mad Bomber. I shut her off.

I went back for the end. Because I wanted to see what was her final, orgiastic, come-off song. When she, and it, and the whole convention kabuki, had completed. To determine whether it was as bizarre and as inappropriate as had been The Hairball's coda: "All Right Now," and "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

But I don't know what the song was. I heard it, but I didn't. Because I was fixated on the balloon.

It is traditional—I know there is a reason, but I don't want to look it up right now—to descend balloons upon the nominee, at a convention, and the balloons are many, and they flow freely, and they bounce around, and everybody is happy, and all the humans, they frolic, amidst the balloons.

And there was a red balloon. And it kept coming at The Mad Bomber. And she kept batting it away.

Which was the opposite of what had happened with The Hairball. There, the balloons, they had avoided the stage. The Hairball, he kept trying to reach out, to bat a blue balloon. But the balloon, it did not want him. It stayed away.

And then I understood. The wisdom of the balloons.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h483u_HQxns]

My friend Z, he is a musician. That is what he is on this planet to do. He's good at that. The music. But there's not a lot, otherwise, that he's good at. For instance, when he and I were both in the pharmaceutical business, I would have to go over to his house, every month, and retrieve his power bill. Because, although mass mounds of money were passing through his hands, pretty much every day, he couldn't get it together, to pay the freaking electricity bill. Because that just wasn't the way he was made. So, I did it for him.

Similarly, years before, Z, he was going to be drafted. This, during Vietnam. He wanted to fight the drafting: but in the apt words of Neil Young: "he tried to do his best, but he could not." Z's younger brother, he knew that Z would never be able to get it together to beat the draft, and he also knew that if Z were then shipped to Vietnam, he would be shot in the head and killed, the moment he stepped off the plane. Because he was just that kind of guy. In that kind of world.

So, Z's younger brother, he enlisted. To save Z from the draft.

This worked. Z stayed home. As his younger brother, went off to Vietnam.

Where he was broken, and he was destroyed.

He was made into a LRRP. People dropped far behind "enemy" lines. To then make it back out again.

This man has murmured not much to me, of what happened to him there. But I know it all. Because I have seen it in his eyes.

When he came back, he married a woman he had known before, and together they moved deep into the woods of Oregon. And from there they only rarely come out. He just doesn't want to be around humans. After the humans. There. In Vietnam. He was around.

Sometimes, he comes out for his brother. My then-wife and I, and our young daughter, we were then, at the time of this tale, living with Z. His brother visited. Our daughter, then, she was, more or less, in and out of the crib. And she really liked balloons. I would blow them up for her, and then we would bat them around. We were doing that one evening. Her in her crib. Me kneeling outside. While Z's brother was visiting. And, as he passed through the room, my daughter, in receiving the balloon, popped it. And Z's brother, he instantly went into a crouch. And then he peed his pants.

That's what they do to people. The Mad Bomber. And The Hairball. That is why they do not get to be the president. That is why they do not get to have the balloons. Because they destroy human beings. They transform an object that is of childhood fun. Into an object of adult pants-wetting fear. They are anathema. They are not to be borne. The Mad Bomber, she has actually been complicit in the killing of human beings. But I do not want to hear, any more, that The Hairball, he has not actually yet killed anyone. And therefore how do we know, that he ever will. Because everything about him, is of violence. Is of killing. His words, they are of violence. His every essence, is of violence. He has promised violence. He has promised torture. He has promised killing. He has promised death. He is the promise, of Thanatos. And he has already: become Death. He has killed the spirit, of the daughter, of my friend S. My friend S, who is ground zero, for the hatreds of The Hairball, and all of his people. S, he is Syrian, and he is Jewish. And his wife, she is Indian, and from Costa Rica. They have two children. The youngest, a daughter, she Looks, she Sees, there in the tubes, and there she Sees a nasty, sweating, scornful, violent man, a man flexing Power, who Hates her, and wants her to be Gone. She cries, and she wants to know, why, this man, he hates her, and wants her to leave. S, he says, it is okay, they will all be safe, because the family has a home, too, there in Costa Rica, in his wife's village, and they can always go there. But, his daughter, because she has empathy, which The Hairball does not, and never will, she says but what about her friends, who have nowhere to go? And S., he has no answer, to that.

The Cranky Brooklyn Deli Man, he is right, in asserting that The Hairball is absolutely unacceptable. He is wrong, in asserting that The Mad Bomber, she may somehow be. Acceptable.

Bloomberg got one thing right, there in his speech. He said that the Americans, they must vote for someone "sane and competent."

The Hairball, he is not sane and competent. The Mad Bomber, she is not sane and competent.

Therefore, the Americans, they cannot vote, for either of them.

The balloons, they are voting, for the Americans. To do the right thing.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS3yUwFnVGQ]